What’s causing my problem?

Graphics cards — or GPUs — determine the visual elements of what you see on your screen, while memory — or RAM — determines how much you can be doing at once. Hard drives serve as storage for your files and folders, and your processor is the raw power behind everything being done in your computer.

The CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT error means that your processor is having trouble with cooperation from its cores and threads. Threads are tasks taken by cores, and some cores can take many threads simultaneously. The problem here is that a thread is waiting for a proper response from another thread — or a core is waiting for a response from another core — and those responses aren’t coming. Therefore, you get this BSoD error.

While this is a processor problem, this can be caused by two things: a driver error, which is very likely if you’re using Windows 8, or the OS itself isn’t playing nice with the processor. First question: how long have you had this computer? Has it been working fine until now?

How do I fix it?

If so, just use System Restore to go back to a point where the system worked. Be wary of using any new devices that may have caused the problem.

If you’re able to boot into Safe Mode when your computer starts, run Driver Reviver to update all your drivers to their latest version. There’s a good chance this will clear up the problem.

You should also use Windows Update, and if you aren’t already using the latest device driver, install that as well.

Drivers are what is used to get your devices like your keyboard to interact with your computer, and while some misconfigured drivers can result in bad performance, bad drivers overwhelmingly result in BSoDs like CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT.

Windows Update can usually solve these problems, but installing new drivers is always advised if you don’t already have the latest version. You should also update your BIOS, which you can find at your motherboard manufacturer’s website, and install from there.

If, however, you can’t boot into your computer at all or this error is still occuring, you’re going to have to get personal help from Microsoft or your manufacturer.

Hi Sami,
Thanks for your input! Something good to try as a possible solution.

ReviverSoft

Hi Abel,
If you’ve recently reinstalled Windows and are getting corrupt system files already, either your hard drive is going bad, or you’ve got some sort of malware. Try running a scan with Malwarebytes and see if that picks up anything. Good luck!

ReviverSoft

Hi Matthew,
Really odd. Sounds like you’re having an overheating issue when the laptop is running on battery power. Have you tried a replacement battery?

ReviverSoft

Interesting. Thanks for the tip, Winminhein!

Robert Luis Fenech

Silvan Hofer I have been clocking my 4770K to 4.8GHz and as I was trying to stable it I saw that I was uping the blk block I see you too have gone that root. Try putting the blk block back down to 100 and use the multaplier instead.